Abandoning Luck

Luck is a funny thing. Some people seem to have a lot of it, like the man back in White Rock who won every contest he ever entered. He had a trailer he won and a car and a barbeque. He had won so much that whenever there was a contest and people heard he entered, they never bothered to put their name in, feeling, what's the use? Which, of course, increased his luck because there weren't as many people competing against him.

Myself, I feel I have good luck in the bad luck.

Years ago, when I was in painting and visual arts, I made contact with an organization that showed art for a fee.  I didn't realize that the woman who ran it was a manipulator and so when she offered to forgo the fee to give me a break, I accepted. I thought it was good luck.

I sold my sculptures and she began to look for a payback. I needed to come in and man the desk, sell other's work and keep an eye on things, hadn't she done me a favor? I did it but after a few weeks of her looking for favors, I began to feel I hadn't made such a good deal, hadn't had as much luck as I thought.

Then, out of the blue, she left town, practically abandoning the organization, which found ten thousand dollars missing. Nothing was done about the money and a new woman took over the running of the place.

This was my good luck because now I was off the hook and the new woman was a nice, honest and straight-forward person. No more favors.

It's that kind of thing which has happened to me all my life, the bad luck then the good luck that makes me think that luck may just be a state of mind or even a creation. Surely I 'see' good luck in things which are bound to happen. Like the woman who obviously didn't know how to run a business organization having to skip town when her 'deals' came back to bite her.

Is bad luck bad choice? Bad judgement?

Well, gamblers will tell you all about luck but I don't play scratch and wins anymore because I think luck is just too ephemeral to trust. Use good judgement, get to know the people who you might want to deal with and make yourself indispensable to your boss, that way you'll always have luck on your job.